The Pearl
An hour before closing on Sunday, I enter through glass doors to the inner sanctum of Marilyn Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty. Hard to resist such an alluring title. Her lush paintings, glossy photographs and videos confront our relationship with the power of desire. Accompanied by a sliding soundtrack of chimes, the seductive images and videos entice and repulse. The exhibition opens with black and white photos of her disillusioned mother gazing in the mirror and expands into large-scale images in vibrant colors – lips and eyes with heavy make up, nails with dirty green polish, grungy designer shoes, jewels, and glittery body parts dripping with translucent liquid. With wry humor, Minter positions the viewer as voyeur to challenge the lure of beauty and the female body, the distinction between art and pornography. Read More »